


Shy of a Spark

by caravanslost



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Post-Kings Rising, Temporary Chastity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 01:37:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17336216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caravanslost/pseuds/caravanslost
Summary: Laurent, presented with a rule that doesn’t suit his immediate needs, feels the pooling of an urge to break it.





	Shy of a Spark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fornavn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fornavn/gifts).



> Title comes from 505 by Arctic Monkeys, a most excellent song.

The night sea is unseasonably still, for midwinter.

Laurent stands at the fore of _The Hennike’s_ deck. The ship had been commissioned by his father, named for his mother, and completed in celebration of Auguste's birth. His hands are braced on its wooden railing, and his eyes are firmly ahead. He has been there most of the day, since before Ios came into view. Remaining in his quarters, sumptuous though they are, makes him feel like a caged animal, and he wants to see Ios before it sees him. The crew does not disrupt him, accustomed by now to the the idiosyncrasies of their monarch.

His eyes are cast ahead, to where Ios is an incandescent point against the inky sky. The sight of it unleashes strange beasts in his stomach. His heart leaps forward at the sight, as if it might lunge overboard and reach shore before the ship. At the same time, a small part of him would order Perrin, the Captain, to navigate the ship back to Arles. His last journey to Ios—and to call it a _visit_ seemed elementally wrong—had been in chains. He had been led up the spiral heights of the city in rags, with the spears of the Regent’s guard at his back, a procession of shame towards the palace for an engagement with an axe.

But—although that memory had sealed itself onto his bones like hot wax—tonight, and even from a distance, Ios is a flaming beacon of light. For all the people who died here, and for all those who almost did, Ios glimmers brighter than any of the stars crowning the night sky above it. Even the limestone cliffs seem to glow, as though illuminated from some deep source within their core.

It’s a clear night tonight, and tomorrow will be the full moon and the winter solstice both, the first double-event of its kind in almost seventy years. It’s a good omen in both Vere and Akielos, although for different reasons in each.

In Akielos, the winter solstice marks the end of the religious calendar. It’s preceded by a week of restraint, modesty, abstinence and penitence to prepare for the new year. The solstice marks its end, observed by a vigil that lasts a day and a night, which sees the entire country awake and prayerful in its sanctums till the following dawn.

While in Vere, he had gathered every scrap of information that could be summoned about the matter: written histories, accounts from Veretian merchants who had passed this period in Akielos, even children’s tales. Laurent had applied himself to absorbing its history and etiquette, even though personally, he has less-than-generous inclinations towards superstition. Still, only a fool would waste the political value of attending the vigil at Damen’s side. A unified kingdom is a behemoth undertaking, but it would be made easier with foundation stones like this one.

He tells himself that this is his reason for the visit, and not the way he has come to loathe the emptiness of his bed, nor the way that his longing for Damen threatens to split him in two. Laurent has come to learn much about himself in four months of separation, including that four months marks the outer limits of his tolerance.

Once the city is in sight, the _Hennike’s_ approach seems to hasten. The shapeless white of the city begins to fragment into buildings and roads. Then, a mass at the port resolves itself into a crowd and its torches, gathered and waiting for him. No—perhaps something more than a crowd. Something far greater. When the ship is close enough to make out individual bodies, if not their detail, he realizes with a jolt that most of Ios has come out to greet him.

A set of footsteps behind him. The sound is loud enough to draw Laurent from his reverie.

“Your Majesty,” says Jord. “Five or ten minutes, at most.”

Laurent can’t tear his eyes away from the sight coming into view. He doesn’t turn his head a degree greater than is absolutely necessary to acknowledge the company.

“Thank you, Jord. I’m well aware.”

It should be the end of the conversation, but Jord doesn’t leave. Laurent registers his overdue presence.

“Is there something else, Jord?”

A hesitant pause. “Your Majesty,” he eventually begins, “I only wonder whether you might reconsider the means of transport to the palace.”

“No.” He says. The word comes like a falling guillotine, a single instrument of finality. He’s heard enough about this matter. “Thank you. You’re dismissed.”

Jord bows, and Laurent catches the gesture out of the corner of his eye. “I am your Majesty’s servant.” Retreating footsteps.

Perhaps he was curter than he needed to be. He might have been more forgiving, but his Councillors had insisted on revisiting the matter every single morning of the journey. A trip by horseback to the palace would jeopardize his safety, they said. A trip by carriage would not. They warned that the warmth between the two thrones had not yet trickled down to their subjects.

Laurent had listened to them, and then grown tired of doing so.

Akielos would be his Kingdom in due course, as Vere would be Damen’s. He did not need reminding that a unified Kingdom would take more than clever political embroidery. The matter kept him awake most nights. But he and Damen had agreed that they had no option but to lead by example, and with trust. A cloistered carriage to the palace achieved neither, especially if Damen proceeded on horseback. Laurent would work to earn love and respect from Akielos. He had little interest in its begrudging tolerance.

The ship comes closer still, and only then can he appreciate the full density of the crowd that has come to greet him. It swells around the port, and up both sides of the central road that loops through the city. He would never be used to this, not after having spent so long disbelieving that it would be his. He had barely warmed his own throne and yet, here was a nation out to meet him. That they might have come out of duty to their own King did not lessen his gratitude.

And there, in the centre of the magnificent tableau: the unmistakable form of Damen. The sight of him ignites a line of fire down Laurent’s back. He allows himself a moment to savour the impenetrable strength of Damen’s frame, and the ridiculous beard he has cultivated in Laurent’s absence, and the unspent energy that speaks not just of a King awaiting his royal equal, but of a lover awaiting his own. Laurent feasts on the sight of him, and then forces himself away to prepare for the docking.

The coming solstice means that their arrival cannot be celebrated with the fanfare that would typically be appropriate. Laurent doesn’t care. A simple chorus awaits him, the lilting melody of their paean—in thanksgiving to the gods for his safe arrival—is more than enough. He disembarks first from the ship, followed by his Councillors and his guards. His heart beats a frenzied rhythm, fuelled by the effort of keeping his muscles from trembling.

He lifts his head imperiously, and meets Damen’s waiting gaze. Damen wears his heart as he always does, outside of his chest and in full public view. Laurent contemplates a universe where it would be acceptable to run into his arms.

Damen’s face is a battleground, an open war raging between his reflex for open affection and his instinct for propriety. Laurent couldn’t care less which of the two he settles on. The fact that the battle is visible to him, and to everyone around him, satisfies something savagely possessive in Laurent. He draws a quiet breath and descends to the floor of the port, his strange nerves slamming against the inside of his chest like white rapids against rock.

Damen is flanked on either side by Kyroi—Nikandros to his left, Agrias of Thrace to his right. Agrias is a man closer in age to their fathers, with a kindly face. He looks between Damen and Laurent with ill-concealed amusement, in mismatch to Nikandros’s poor attempt at neutral indifference. They each bend a knee for him, heads bowed, and the whole town behind them follows suit, a wave of kneeling that spreads like ribbon in the wind and levels the crowd, as far as Laurent can see. Behind Laurent, he senses his own retinue kneeling for Damen.

A whole city, and only they remain standing. The crowd of thousands becomes a crowd of two.

Damen’s gaze on him is a line of molten metal, poured into a foundry mold, an unstoppable force of heat. Neither of them can allow him to act on it. The rites of chastity must be observed. They can’t embrace. They can’t kiss. Damen can do no more than offer a hand to Laurent as if he were any other king, a royal brother. Laurent can do no more than accept it, clasping their hands together tightly, eyes dancing where their bodies cannot.

“Hello, your Highness,” says Damen.

“Hello, Exalted,” says Laurent, even though his mind is in his hands, focused on every point where skin meets warm skin. “I see you brought an audience.”

Damen drops his voice. “I would have come alone, if I could.” His words are simple, but the tone with which he offers them leaves no mistake as to his meaning.

Nikandros, still kneeling, catches what he says. He fails to suppress a twitch in his shoulders.

Laurent cannot a resist a smile. “Well then. You were right to bring chaperones.”

* * *

They’re received with as much hospitality as the austere observance will allow. They dine, not in the King’s banquet hall, but in one of the private dining chambers off the royal suites in the north wing. Laurent prefers the setting, flung out as it is to the sea and the night sky. From some distant courtyard come the sounds of wheels on cobbles, horses, cattle being led to slaughter in preparation for the new year’s feast.

Laurent and Damen are joined by the Kyroi, Laurent’s Councillors, and the heads of Ios’s five most noble families. All the Akielon guests are unornamented, dressed modestly in the same simple white cloth as their King—no jewellery, no kohl, no reddened lips or cheeks. The only markers to denote the two kings in the room are the gold cuffs on their wrists.

The food is equally austere fare, peasant dishes without meat—a thick soup of lentils and cumin; and rice with onions and foraged herbs. The party is served neither sweets not wine, and dinner concludes with a strong, unsweetened tea served from earthenware pots in small rounded cups. Talk is strictly political, but Laurent’s spirits are too high to deflate.

Damen’s hand moves to rest on Laurent’s at the end of the meal, and remains there. Every pair of eyes in the room sees him do it. The action spikes rebelliously at the atmosphere, but Damen speaks through the attention as though his hand on Laurent’s is fire in a hearth, something that simply ought to be where it is. Worse still—all the guests then avoid looking at it with a pointed and studious devotion. This only serves to entrench it as the focal point of the room.

Laurent can’t honestly say that he objects.

Finally—well past midnight, and long before the conversation has been exhausted—the two of them dismiss the party for the evening. They make their way to Damen’s expansive chambers, which had belonged to his father in life. On the way, Damen speaks to him about tomorrow’s order of proceedings, idle chatter safe for the ears of the guards and servants that they pass. Laurent wants to reach for Damen, but he can’t, and the effort of refraining means that he barely hears a word.

They arrive. Laurent pauses at the threshold of the bedroom and grapples with the memories that seize him at the sight of it. He hasn’t set foot in this room for close to a year. He nursed Damen back to health here. Here, both of them had grappled with the costs of their victory, and begun to consider the magnitude of their undertaking. They had made love, once and then again, and Damen had held Laurent through the sleepless night before his return to Vere.

Damen is still next to him, watching with attention sharpened on the grindstone of his experience with Laurent. He doesn’t reach out, but he doesn’t move away either, and lets Laurent ride out everything that he’s feeling in his own time.

Laurent exhales, shutters back the tide of what he’s feeling. In case turning towards Damen undoes his good work, his eyes catch one of the low couches near them and he collapses onto it, lifting his legs onto the supple fabric. Damen shuts the heavy door behind them, the vibrations of its closing rumbling through the floor and into the couch.

Laurent’s limbs ache, like fabric rolled too tightly and for too long, and only now unfurled. He luxuriates in the ability to spread his limbs, to wring them out on a surface that isn’t bobbing away underneath him.

"I've missed you,” Damen says, still by the door.

Laurent sits up on his elbows. The shift pulls the hem of his chiton well up his thigh. And piety be damned, Damen’s eyes fall hungrily on the few inches of newly exposed skin. Laurent follows the brazen line of his gaze, and gives himself over to the night’s second wave of savage delight as it crashes through him.

In his most wanton tone, Laurent says, “Do your scriptures require you to keep three metres away from me?”

Damen meets his eye, but not before raking his gaze shamelessly up the length of Laurent’s body. “No. That’s a rule of my own making.”

“We still have to share a bed tonight.”

“And the success of next year’s harvest depends on me keeping my hands off you.”

Laurent, presented with a rule that doesn’t suit his immediate needs, feels the pooling of an urge to break it. He sits up properly, energized by the thrill of it, and doesn’t readjust his hem. They haven’t played like this in a while, and he intends to take the conversation to its limits.

“For all this talk of chastity,” Laurent says, low, “you look like you’re about to swallow me whole.”

Damen looks at him as though he means to disapprove. It’s obvious that he doesn’t, and the result is almost comical in how conflicted it looks.

“If you keep talking like that,” Damen says, with difficulty, “I might have to.”

Laurent stands up.

He walks back to Damen at a lingering pace, which has the unintended but useful effect of, with each step, canting his hips at a greater angle. The movement isn’t natural to him, and he’s always more conscious of his body in Damen’s company, but he’s rewarded with a look of admiring approval. He stops just short of Damen, close enough that an errant breath would bring their bodies together.

“Well, with _that_ invitation,” Laurent says, and trails off with it, more confident than he feels.

Damen’s breath hitches. “A good king wouldn’t tempt me.”

“A good king would have taken three steps back by now.”

There’s barely room for air between them, but it sparks nonetheless. Damen uses his eyes for the sins he won’t allow his hands. His gaze is as hot as touch, raising blood where it traces along Laurent’s skin. Laurent would trade away both their kingdoms for the pleasure of watching him yield, and reach out, and the satisfaction of that first tender, proprietary touch.

Damen is struggling, visibly. “You should have arrived after the solstice.”

“And missed this chance to torment you? Never.”

He raises a hand to the hem of Damen’s chiton, where it crosses his chest. He traces the length of it with his finger, feels the palpable effect that his touch wrecks on Damen’s breathing. Laurent isn’t careful enough to restrain from grazing a few fingers along Damen’s skin. He pauses two fingertips over his heart and feels, with satisfaction, the rampant drumbeat beneath them.

Laurent stirs beneath his chiton. A brief glance downwards confirms, as usual, that Damen is fathoms ahead in that particular department. Laurent glances back up with a look like sugar syrup.

"The gods will reward your restraint more, if it’s been tested."

“They’re not even _your gods_ ,” Damen says, tartly. “And they don’t have to stand this close to you.”

“Then what should we do?”

Damen closes his eyes, fighting back a breath that might be a laugh. “Go. Bathe. Before I take you to bed and bring ruin on both our countries.”

Laurent waits till Damen opens his eyes again, just to shoot him a final, sly look.

“Can I at least touch myself in the baths?”

He already knows the answer, but asks the question purely to provoke a response. He receives the exact one that he angles for: a torn, gravelly sound.

“ _Laurent_.”

Laurent laughs, and leaves him alone.

An attendant is waiting for him in the baths, but Laurent dismisses him. The usual stockpiles of lathering creams and scented oils have been removed from their niches, leaving only simple bars of olive oil soap for him to use. He washes quickly and economically, and dries himself off with one of the available cotton towels. Next to them, a bed-shirt has been prepared for him. He slips into it.  

When he returns to the bedchamber, he finds it darkened. The night outside the room seems brighter than the light inside it. The servants must have come in while he was away and attended to the fires, which are now banked. Only candles remain, seated in shallow silver trays, dispersed around the surfaces of room.

Laurent looks to the bed, in which Damen lies waiting for him. His body is half-buried beneath fur throws. Laurent moves closer and climbs in next to him, the sudden warmth of the bed a rush against the thin fabric of his bed-shirt.

Damen rests on his side, perched on one elbow, firmly on the other side of the bed. For four months, Laurent has dreamed of little else. Now, a few hand-widths apart, the need to abstain from each other’s bodies seems a purposeful divine jest. To reach out for Damen would be the easiest thing in the world. His muscles are hot with the urge to touch him. The brightness in Damen’s eyes tells Laurent that he’s thinking much the same thing.

“How about,” Laurent begins slowly, “you only hold me, and leave it there?”

Damen responds with a flat look. “Ask me for something I _know_ how to do.”

“Try? For my sake.”

A sigh, a dipping towards the centre of the mattress as Damen moves closer. The heat of his body is warmer than all the fur throws flung atop each other. It’s always a jolt to feel it anew.

Damen slides an arm around Laurent’s waist and pulls his whole body closer, easy as butter under a hot knife. He brings them close enough for their foreheads to tilt against each other, for their lips to hover tantalisingly close.

That’s all it takes for Damen to harden against his leg—and in the next moment, before Laurent’s mind can work through what’s happened—a rush of movement, where Damen sits up and practically _flees_ the bed.

Damen stands near the bedpost, an exasperated look across his features.

Laurent fights back the rueful smile threatening the corner of his mouth. “Going somewhere?”

But Damen is already reaching for the throws, pulling two of them off the bed.

“I’m sleeping on the couch,” he declares. “I don’t trust either of us.”

* * *

Servants enter the bedchamber and wake them while it’s still dark outside. They bring in fresh, unadorned chitons, and a simple breakfast of bread and oil. The fast begins at dawn, and it will last until dawn of the following day. They would see through its entirety in the royal sanctum, at the easternmost point of the palace.

It would be Damen’s first observance as King. It had seemed right to Laurent to be by his side, to embark on it together, a shared vigil and fast to portend good things for their shared kingdom. And although Damen would never have required his presence, Laurent knows that he’s grateful for it.

They arrive at the cavernous sanctum before dawn, and find it already full with the other families of the Akielon Court. The space is large and circular, capped with a high dome, a counterpoint to the sharp lines of Veretian houses of worship. The ring of windows below the dome is shrouded with heavy black cloth, darkening the space, a custom for the vigil. The effect is like walking into the dead of the night at dawn, and sparse platters of candles provide the only dim light.

The order of the rites is cyclical, repeating every hour, and the priestesses recite a succession of dirges and prayers. The sounds of prayer echo around the high chamber, rising with the scent of the musky incense. The air is heavy with both.

And the fast is gruelling. Hourly water comes to them, served by a young girl, but after a while it’s barely enough to go by. The repetitive words begin to feel and sound unreal to Laurent, and his attention begins to waver. He focuses on keeping still and wills his body not to require rearrangement, lest his fidgeting be taken for boredom.

But he holds still, because next to him, Damen is still. For all his complaints from the night before, his eyes are forward and attentive on the scene below. Laurent is transfixed by this side of him—this solemn side, a regality that runs deep within him like an underground river.

Hours pass, and the endless revolution of the rites continues—until the twenty-third hour, when everything changes. The priestesses begin to recite prayers from a different book, and the songs switch to a major key. Then, the sounds of instruments: first, the shallow beat of a tympanum; followed by the rounder tones of a lyre and cithara. The crowd remains silent and observant, but the joyful shift in the air is unmistakable at the return of these small symbols of life.

When the sanctum bells peal, marking the end of the vigil, the shrouds are removed from the windows. The early morning light that trickles in is low, but after a full day’s darkness, Laurent has to close his eyes against it. Other bells around the city begin to ring, chiming into a single joyful cacophony. The sound is overbearingly loud, and wonderful for it. Laurent turns to Damen, who’s waiting for him with tired eyes and a smile. Because he can now, Laurent reaches for Damen’s hand and raises it to his lips, pressing a chaste kiss to his knuckles. He’s rewarded with a grin that flings his heart over the cliffs.

Servants mill into the sanctum and bring platters of sweets to break the fast. Damen must be the first to do so, and the sanctum falls silent as all eyes turn to them. He takes a honeyed cake from the tray held out for him. It’s drenched in sugar syrup, and it stains his fingers with sweetness as he breaks it in two.

Laurent knows about this part of the ceremony, and waits for Damen to bring the morsel to his lips. It’s the single intimate public gesture in all of Akielon etiquette, a lone concession to indulgence after the exhaustion of piety. And, notwithstanding all the things that Laurent has seen in Vere, it strikes him as an oddly intimate sport for kings to play out before their court.

Still—when the morsel is offered to him, he eats it demurely from Damen’s fingers. He takes the other morsel from his hands and in turn, feeds it to him. The Akielon court cheers and claps, and turns back to itself to reflect this final rite in its own pairs.

Laurent watches them, transfixed, and gives himself over to a joy of dangerous magnitudes. The kind that tempts gods to gamble it away. He closes his eyes against the thought.

Damen’s lips find his temple, and press softly against it. “Laurent.”

“Hm?”

“Be here. With me.”

Laurent offers a tired smile in lieu of response. He might never be able to relax, but perhaps for now, he can safely exhale.

From there, a blur of activity as they leave the sanctum and return to the royal wing. They won’t have time to sleep, and they have a full day’s worth of feasting and revelry ahead of them, over which they both must preside. It’ll be celebration as a sport of endurance, and to think of it bursts a dull ache in Laurent’s head.

But finally, _finally_ , they find themselves alone in Damen’s chambers, with the door closed safely behind them, blissfully alone.

Platters of sweets, fruits and breads await them, arranged in extravagant mounds next to bottles of nectar and wine. The early morning light is dim, and platters of fresh candles newly adorn the tables, releasing amber and musk into the air. Everything combines to ethereal effect, making Laurent feel as though he’s stepped into a warm dream.

He turns to Damen. They have half an hour at the absolute most.

Mustering his lightest tone, he says, “Have we secured the harvest enough for your liking?”

Damen takes a step towards him, eyes dancing. “My great grandfather kept the fast for two days, you know.”

Laurent narrows his gaze. “Don’t you dare.”

“But think,” Damen says, taking another step, joy smudging the edges of his mouth, “of the harvest.”

Laurent reaches for the golden starburst pin at the crest of his shoulder. With three fluid motions, he unclasps it, tugs on the thin length of fabric that serves as a belt, and lets the whole garment drop unceremoniously to the floor.

He allows the fabric to pool at his feet, and doesn’t kick it away.

The way Damen looks at him—at _all_ of him—strikes a thrill through Laurent’s body like a hammer against a drum. The vibrations course through his bones and rob him of every last breath.

“You were saying something about the harvest,” Laurent counters, smug. He knows a winning hand when he plays one.

“Was I?” Damen says, low. “I’ve forgotten.”

And leans in, and scoops him up, and takes him to bed.


End file.
